Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Stickman’

Written by Scott Edwards

​There is something about your past that will just never leave your side. As we have all made decisions while growing up, most of them were good, but those few bad ones will stick with us until the day we die. The only thing you can do is to learn to accept that you made a mistake and keep moving forward and while some people are able to do this with ease, most of us don’t even want to think about it ever again. There is only one way to try and lead a happy life and that is living it with no regrets and while it is easy to say that you do, it is something totally different to do so.
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After being charged with killing her mother and sister, Emma has found a new home in the Hollybrook Institution but is still plagued with the nightmares of what really happened. Lashing out in reality when she is dreaming, another patient knows exactly what she is dealing with. Forming a friendship with Jeremy over the Stickman that comes in their dreams, she finds out that he has a plan on how to defeat the monster. Drawing the Stickman during the day, the only way to keep it away for good is to finish the drawing when you are next to death. Accomplishing this on her own time, Emma is found in her room next to death, but with her drawing complete in a place that nobody would ever look.

Ten years have passed, and the nightmares have not come back, and Emma is shocked to get a visit from her doctor telling her that she is about to be released. Hearing the news, Jeremy turns his back on his only friend and there is nothing that Emma is able to do to get him to say anything to her before she leaves. Being sent to a halfway house to get accustomed to living on the outside, Emma is greeted by Paige who cannot be happier to have a new roommate and Liv who wants nothing to do with the new outcast. Being welcomed into the house and meeting all of the other girls, Liv finds out the deep dark secret about Emma and the double murder that she committed years ago.

As attitudes fly around the house, Liv takes the next step and digs through Emma’s bag and finds an old poem. Reading it aloud despite Emma’s warning, Liv has unleashed the Stickman upon the world once again, but this time it is different as it is not only in people’s dreams, but in reality. Fighting off the Stickman after he kills the house mother and driver, the girls are willing to put the blame on Emma, but there is much more at stake as both of the adults in the house have been killed. Trying to come up with a plan that will not get any of them arrested, the group finds out that the Stickman is hunting all of them. Needing to find a way to stop the Stickman once again, Emma knows that Jeremy is the only one that can help them, but in a race against time, will she be able to find her best friend before everyone she knows is killed?

I was not as blown away by this movie as I thought I would be, but I did get introduced to a great actress in Hayley Law (Emma) who made this story come to life. While I usually don’t hand out praises to actors or actresses in movies, Hayley really had to shine to make this movie watchable. I liked the storyline overall, with people dying in their sleep without reason and the Stickman being responsible for all of their deaths. I really wish there was a little bit more to the subplots that were being hit on, as you have Emma researching all of the strange deaths, but there was no real follow up to it. With a creepy nightmare killer come to life, blood, jump scares, padded rooms, a fire and a friendship reunited, while I was not blown away by the movie, my eyes were still glued to the screen to see what happened next. Stay Scared.

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